INSTITUTE OF TRADEMARK ATTORNEYS

At any time, the Institute has about 1600 members; as well as the core fully qualified Trade Mark Attorneys, its membership also includes those training to be Trade Mark Attorneys, foreign Trade Mark Attorneys and other professionals in other related areas of the law e.g. Barristers who have a Trade Mark/Design interest. Like all businesses, you invest a great deal of time and money in developing and marketing a product or service. You naturally wish the public to recognise that product or services as yours and yours alone. By using a trade mark - an exclusive way of identifying your own product or services - you can build up loyalty among your customers. A trade mark assures consumers that the product or service you're selling is in fact yours: it raises awareness and enables brand extension into other products or markets.

It identifies your goods and differentiates them from others. It avoids confusion and stops others copying your product. There is an extraordinary range of trade marks which can be registered including words, logos, jingles, colours, smells, shapes, gestures, sounds, combinations of letters, numbers, forms of packaging and personal names. The more you focus the use of your mark and the longer you use to identify your goods and services, the stronger and more valuable it becomes. Some brands are priceless: COKE, LEGO, SHELL.

These, and others like them, have all become so famous that they are more than just their names - probably some very familiar images came up while you were reading this paragraph. But until it is registered, a mark might not belong to you. If someone else gets the mark registered first, you may have to withdraw all your products, redesign all your packaging, draw up a new publicity campaign, pay compensation and/or buy a licence from the registered owners. It is therefore crucial to register and use your mark correctly, so that it can become a key intellectual property asset.